Current
by fallen-chan
Summary: A smile in the air and a thought in the wind. One step forward, air in and air out, until they are at the beginning once more. •ℵ• very mildly AU


**Disclaimer:** I don't own anyone.

**A/N:** That general disclaimer still applies, of course. um. I think that's about it.

**Summary:** A smile in the air and a thought in the wind. One step forward, air in and air out, until they are at the beginning once more. •ℵ• very mildly AU

* * *

The day his son is born, swathed in blue cloth so dark it seems black under the stark fluorescent lights of the hospital room, there are no cicadas singing in the gardens and the thousand paper cranes scattered in the stone become wisps in the wind, colours a bold streak against a dreary backdrop of gray. Black flickers in the corner of his eye and his _Sharingan_ spin wildly as he waits for the message (for there is no respite from war for the birth of a clan heir and it _is_ still a war, he firmly believes) from the hospital to arrive. The wind blows cold, whipping at his face, and he fancies that his son ought to have been born in winter, when the emptiness of the sky and the shadows reaching over the ground do not have the elders shaking their heads and muttering about ill omens and a thousand other things beside. The small _uchiwa_ in his hand is a delicate thing of wood and thin paper, painted red-on-black with three _tomoe_ on each of the wooden spines, and it feels out of place, a child's toy in the place of his weapons.

Black eyes watch him as soon as he enters the room and Mikoto is smiling down at the small pale-skinned face peeking out of the blanket; he leaves the _uchiwa_ in her lap and the harsh planes of his face are softer (_for a moment, the world narrows to become a bed and a chair and tangled blankets strewn on the floor_) when he _looks_ and sees not just a healthy heir but a son. _His_ son. It is only years of training as a _shinobi_ and as the Uchiha clan head that keep him from reacting any more than he already does (and even then, a tiny voice in his mind whispers traitorously, he has already displayed a weakness in _public_ and that is one slip too many).

The room is very empty, he notes in the back of his mind (_paranoia, his father scoffed, is a fool's label for what he does not understand. Sharingan eyes whirl hypnotically and bore into his face and he thinks he knows what it means to be prey._) He almost – _almost_ – activates his Sharingan to sweep the room and he _does_ open his mouth to question his wife (_where are the well-wishers, the clan elders to witness the official birth, the Uchiha iryou-nin pulled from duty for this, the trained bodyguards?_) but he closes it when he sees a flicker of dark red cloth hidden in the corner and instead averts his eyes toward the window. There is no need to let ANBU know _anything_, not when they carry that message straight to the Hokage and his advisors, to the hand-picked successors of the _Senju_. There are very few people in the clan who wear red, as specified by old decrees created long before any of the elders were born, but red on an Uchiha means _Mangekyou Sharingan_ and dark red means that form of _Sharingan_ has been mastered.

When he stands to leave, he notices, very suddenly, that his son's eyes are open and staring right at him. He thinks that those eyes follow him out the door and he ruthlessly shoves down any hints of hesitation, because he knows what it means if his suspicions are right and he knows that it must be done (_there is more at stake here than one child and one family_), and sends the summons for a meeting of the clan elders, as is tradition. (_He sits at the head of the table and listens to old men and women clinging to skills long-forgotten argue back and forth until the air is filled with chaos, but his eyes are focused on the end of the table and the spinning Mangekyou Sharingan there; when the man blinks once, Fugaku knows that it is true and calls an end to the debate and the tiny part of him that is not pure shinobi and clan head withers and bleeds dry. The newborn child being watched over by Uchiha iryou-nin is less his child now and more of a clan asset and he thinks that if he were a lesser man, he would pretend that it was not his decision to make.)_

(_Fugaku remembers enough of that filial pride and love that he forgets to mention to the clan council that his newly-born heir follows him with old eyes that leave him uncomfortable under their undisguised scrutiny. It lasts for a year, until the Uchiha are overlooked for the Hyuuga time after time and he walks into the blue-red-black room and sees his son with the uchiwa larger than his face in hand, staring at a painting on the wall. He thinks then that his son was aptly named 'Itachi' at birth._

_The next day, he leaves a tiny set of rubber kunai and shuriken for Itachi, bound together by a giant ring of red. He returns at the end of the day and the painting is scuffed by black streaks and the elders call a meeting and make the announcement that Itachi is a prodigy in the making and he goes through the motions of consenting to his erstwhile son's new status as Uchiha clan __**property**__, an always-sharp weapon loyal only to the clan.)_

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

It has been many years since his feet touched the dirt past the borders of Konohagakure, past the twin statues (_and who, he wonders, was a fool enough to carve his likeness into the stone of the waterfall to serve as a reminder that he was driven away by those he once called 'family'?)_ at what children now called the Valley of the End.

Madara prefers to think of that valley as a beginning. It sounds that much nicer than the suggestion that he _died_, that his legacy was destroyed, that he is nothing but ink and words on paper for children to memorize for the glorification of an optimistic _idiot_ who would lead a village to ruin and _his_ clan with it (for it was still _his_ in the manner of his blood being the older and darker vein though they would sooner drive him away and murder him themselves than admit it).

He stops, sandals curling around the edge of stone made slippery by the spray of water as it topples over the precipice to break on the jagged rocks below, and turns to see the visage of a man he remembers best as the warm flesh that met his hands and feet, that gasped for breath when he pressed his thumbs in the hollow of the exposed throat until wood raked his arms and wrists and face. He thinks that Hashirama Senju would be horrified to learn that he has survived, grown a village from vapour and blood that molds to whatever he wishes it to be, and once again turned his eyes toward Konoha (_but now, there is no one to oppose him, no Nidaime to twist water from air, no Shodaime to turn the earth against him, and only an old man long past his prime fills the vacant seat)_. The thought is an amusing one.

He thinks that the Senju would be even more horrified to know the full extent of his influence (_the puppet-master behind the puppeteer in the shadows, as one of the Kiri-nin once put it_) and he thinks that the tiny measure of satisfaction that thought brings with it is but a fraction of the _rightness_ that will come when Konoha is burning and crumbling, brought down and crushed into the ground until the earth is wet with blood and ashes. ("_Uchiha Madara holds grudges for a very long time" the psychological evaluation reads; and he looks up and smiles with bone-white teeth as the stapled papers burn in his hand and his Sharingan is spinning slowly.)_

Madara has heard rumours, spread through seedy taverns and brothels by drunken _shinobi_ far away from home, that the Uchiha are awaiting the birth of a new heir. He thinks that, as the original clan head (_he does not include those weaker than him as worth noticing_), it is only his right to pass judgment on those who would lead _his_ clan (for it is still his, even after they betrayed him and pushed him away and prostrated themselves at the feet of the Senju like filthy _dogs_). He reaches out with his chakra and his _Ein no Mangekyou Sharingan_ spin wildly as the edges of his form become insubstantial and he casts a derisive look at the Shodaime's statue before he disappears (to _home_).

There is a room somewhere deep beneath the main house of the Uchiha clan, where the clan head has always traditionally dwelt, with a stone table covered in fine dust and ash and dried blood. He notices the dust before he is even fully there and there is a contemptuous sneer on his face (_how low the mighty have fallen, how fast they fall, how hard_) when he sees the scraps of tattered cloth that was once Izuna's cloak and the cobwebs, heavy with dust, spun between the scrolls stacked in the far corner. It has been many many years since this room has been used. _('Drip' goes the water falling from the edge of the table, a pool of shattered glass on the edge all sharp edges and refracted light, and he looks up from his scroll and silently hands over paper towels to clean the mess up and pretends the white bandages – pretty pristine white for health and purity, no decay allowed for his brother – do not cover gaping black holes in place of eyes. His eyes burn when he looks down at the scroll again and he shoves away the tattered bits of conscience that eat away at his mind and tells himself that Izuna was willing and it is for the good of the clan and it cannot be wrong because Izuna was willing and the clan has prospered for it._) The bookcase is slowly rotting (holes in the empty shelves, bits and pieces of decay that neatly cover everything) but he knows still where _his_ property is, the weapons sealed into the scroll on the top shelf hovering precariously over the edge, the _kinjutsu_ scattered on the middle shelves, the half-finished scroll on the _Ein no Mangekyou Sharingan_ in a corner of the bottom shelf, next to a calligraphy brush without hairs. The tapestry of the _Kyuubi no Kitsune_ splayed on the white of an _uchiwa_ still hangs over the stone fireplace and his chakra brushes against the woven fabric. Madara fancies that he can _feel_ the malice of the demon, chakra-given-flesh, in the cloth and he thinks, _this is home, this is where I was meant to be, this is where I should have been_.

He takes a breath and musty air filters into his lungs and settles and there is no longer that sense of urgency in the back of his mind that there will not be enough time (he is an _Uchiha_ and the only of the clan with the _Ein no Mangekyou Sharingan_ and the world is _his_ and it has always been and will always be). Uchiha Madara can taste the decay in the back of his throat and the smell hangs heavy in the air and he smiles, bone-white teeth against red lips against pale scarred skin.

When he emerges from the ground through the floor, the hallways are quiet and empty in the dreary gloom of a day more winter than summer in the early hours of the morning, trapped somewhere between the emptiness of a building dead to the world and the subdued life of sleep. His feet carry him softly over the hardwood floors (_tip-tap tip-tap over and over, he used to hear, when the skeleton in black with a dull metal scythe haunted his steps)_ and he stops before a sliding door half-open and leaves and flower petals blow into the hallway and their greens and reds and blues are dull and muted inside. He remembers this garden vaguely, when it was still a tiny thing with white rocks and crimson flowers and twigs for trees. It is much older now and the bonsai have taken on odd shapes and the patterns raked into the pebbles twist and turn before his eyes and never stop. He steps on a red crane and the paper gives way and rips beneath his feet and he knows there are only nine hundred and ninety-nine cranes for a newborn child in this world. _Senbazuru._ He smiles and wonders if that means the wish is snapped, broken and shattered.

_(They say that a crane will live for one thousand years and grant exactly one wish in those thousand years. He calls it civilian superstition and his eyes glow red-behind-black in the dim lights of the T__ō__r__ō __and he believes – no, he knows – that he will live eternal and crush the dying breaths of a red-crowned crane and steal the crown for himself.)_

It is very easy for him to slip past the _iryou-nin_ watching over the sleeping infant and even easier for him to circumvent the guards, dressed neatly in dark red with black armor. Madara smiles cold when he sees it and tastes the irony that the Uchiha clan would decree their elite be attired in the most infamous outfit of their exile. He does not need to send chakra to his ears to hear the _'thump-thump'_ of a beating heart or hear the air rushing in and out of tiny lungs.

There are black eyes watching him when he looks down into a wooden cage and he watches the child with spinning _Sharingan_ and thinks to himself that there is potential in this child, latent talent hidden behind pale fragile skin and buried in weak muscles and soft bones and tender meat. There is potential in every child, he knows. His smile is a cold cruel thing and the infant blinks up at him and reaches with weak fingers and grabs at empty air and smiles back and he believes that perhaps this once he will see that potential grow and rip apart the human shell and burn cold and devour until all that is left is him-you-it.

_(He lowers the kunai in his hand and cuts open a tiny chest and reaches down and twists and pulls and pushes until the beating heart sits neatly in his hand, pumping blood out to splatter onto silk blankets and burning skin. The child stares up at him with black eyes and he cuts out a tiny part of an artery and tosses it out the window and shoves the incomplete organ back into the bloody open cavity and snaps soft ribs back into place and sews up warm flesh until there is not even a seam. The child licks blood from his lips and languid satisfaction runs liquid through his veins.)_

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

It is July and the sun is rising pale pink and red and orange over the horizon and the grey-black clouds absorb the light and colour and let out watery dim grey-white in return.

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um. this is supposed to be part of a series of one-shots (though whether or not I'll actually remember the rest is highly debatable). apologies if Fugaku/Madara/etc. seem a bit off. I still don't think Kishimoto gave me enough material to work with, but maybe the mildly AU label will cover that.


End file.
